Hoodie girls

I don't know if you can see it or not but there is a rainbow along the sunset - beautiful! We are almost home, about an hour to go.

Homeward bound!

We are on our way back to Michigan, traveling through the most boring state ever... Ohio.

God must have made that. He's a pretty silly man!

My daughters say the funniest things.  Today was no different.  We were visiting a friend today and my youngest, who just turned three, saw the glass doors in the bathroom instead of a shower curtain and this is what went through her little brain:

'What is that?' as she points to the shower doors.

'A shower' I reply.

'No, where's the curtain.  This is glass - how do they get in there?'

'You open the door see...' as I show her that it slides.

'God must have made that. she says...

'Maybe it was the person who built the house.' I offered.

'No, God made it - he's a pretty silly man!' she exclaims



So for those of you who were wondering where glass shower doors come from, now you know.



We had a great day visiting friends (long overdue) and watching the Steelers game.  Well, I tried to watch it, but it's pretty difficult with two kids in a foreign house that's kid-free.  I felt like I was watching their every move, waiting for them to break something or ruin something.  Then came the whining/crying because nap time was overdue and I felt like we were ruining the gathering.. of course once the girls settled down and fell asleep my friends said they missed the excitement that they brought.. they were entertaining.  Their entertainment is my headache, go figure :).  Seriously though they girls were pretty well behaved for spending almost 5 hours with a room full of adults.


After that we went out to have our final Christmas Dinner with my grandfather.  The girls had a fabulous time with their cousins, aunt, uncle, pap, and grandma's.  I think poor grandma Vicki took a pretty bad beating from three energetic pre-school aged kids.  She was rolling around on the floor playing with them, being their horse, tickling, etc...  But that's what grandma's are for, right?  The kids were spoiled again and I can confidently say that they couldn't possibly want or need anything for the rest of the year.  No matter how much we say 'save your money.. don't go crazy.. they don't need presents'  my pleads are overruled by loving family who rarely get to see them so in turn they shower them with gifts.  I guess we'll save the 'be grateful for what you have' speech for later and let them enjoy being spoiled for a little while...

Well...  I think it's time to wrap this up.  We're going to be on the long road back to Michigan again tomorrow and there's lots to do to pack up and head home.  Can't Vacation last forever?

I'll leave you with the birthday girl...

Favorite Photos of 2010

It's easy to remember the bad things that happen, which is why I like to take pictures of the good things!  Here's a picture for each month of 2010 and what I love about each one.

This is my favorite Photo from December for a number of reasons.  First, I'm RARELY in a picture.  Second, I usually hate the pictures that I'm in.  Most of all though, I'm in a picture with two beautiful little girls who are HAPPY and I'm visiting them at school - that's what I love most about this picture.

In November we celebrated Nick's birthday in our happy place, Frankenmuth.  Seriously, we should live there...  we're much nicer people when we're there.  I love the tights N is wearing in this picture, love that Nick is wearing a wool hat that I knit for him and that this was taken outside of the wool store, but most of all I love that the three people that I love more than anything in this world are all bundled up in the same pretty picture.

This picture was taken on a beautiful day in October.  I love the fabulous fall colors in the picture, I love that I managed to snap this picture as we were hopping along the sidewalk on the way to the park, and I love that beautiful smile on my sweet little girl!

September was filled with nothing other than Friday Night Lights as we watched my brother in law play his final year of high school football.  When I say play, I mean we watched him watch the other guys play but you know what I mean.  He didn't get much playtime but he still loves football and we had a fun time cheering him on!

In August I photographed my first wedding.  More importantly it was my Uncle's wedding and he happened to be marrying the best thing that ever happened to him.  This is the bride kissing their sweet little girl.

July is always fun with summer picnic's, parties, and Independence Day celebrations.  What better childhood memory to capture than the slip-n-slide next to sisters in the kiddie pool?  You know that day was fun!

The Strawberry Festival is in June each year on Father's Day Weekend.  This year was great because both girls were able to ride the rides and they had a blast.  Daddy takes them on the Ferris Wheel because I'm terrified of them, but they sure are pretty!

 

May was pretty uneventful, I think I was still getting used to my camera at that point, but we did start talking about having me take my brother-in-law's senior pictures.  They didn't end up happening until July but I spent a couple of months looking at poses, learning my camera, and thinking about locations.  This is my favorite picture from the set.

April was my birthday, and Nick got me my first DSLR (I don't know how I lived without it.)  It was also my oldest daughter's very first dance recital.  She was in the hip-hop class and they danced to 'You Can't Touch This'.  It was cute, but she and her sister decided to take Ballet this time around so that they can have pretty ballerina costumes like this friend.

In March this little girl turned 4!  As the snow was melting on the ground we started walking regularly to give this girl time to master her biking skills.  I love the colors in this and the retro look to it.  I also love that it's rough and dirty, not clean and sparkly - kids don't have fun when they're clean and sparkly!

I think we were going a little stir crazy in February, waiting for spring.  We had a few princess parties and had fun taking pictures of silly faces!

Oh my baby girl who had just turned 2 in this photo, holding one of my favorite Dr. Seuss books last January...  *sniff*  she's grown so much over the past year!

Phone Test

Test blog from my phone with a bonus picture of my little sweetheart trying her first cup of Dippin' Dots. THE ICE CREAM OF THE FUTURE!

A new decade, a new year, an old blog.

Well hello again, it's been a while.

I'd really like to get back into blogging and this will be my first attempt to get back into it. Hopefully there will be more to come.

My husband had to work so we spent Christmas at home. It was nice being able to wake up and let the kids run downstairs to see what 'Santa' brought them. Their little hearts were just filled with excitement, my oldest even started talking to herself at one point, holding her chest, telling herself to calm down. *squee* That's the moment that parents wait for at Christmas time.

Santa was good to them too. They were very specific this year. They asked for Purple Unicorn Pillowpets, A Baby Alive Feeding Baby, and a Doctor Set. Santa can live up to those expectations!



If you really want to see excited though, we'd need to look back to a few days prior. We took our annual trip to the 'North Pole'. For some reason the girls got it in their head that the local Lightfest is the North Pole. We probably put that in their heads being silly at some point, but they believe it and it always seems to work in our favor. The drive isn't that far but we usually go late at night so it's dark and they don't know where we're going. The line is long so they typically fall asleep until just before we enter the gates, and you drive through all of the lights to the end where Santa is. They get to go in and talk to Santa in their PJ's, get a pic and drop of their letters in the mailbox. It's good family fun, but back to my original point - this is what excited looks like according to my 4.5 year old:



Don't you wish you were 4 again?
Or maybe you want to be a 3 year old mommy?

Yes, that's right. My baby just turned 3 on New Year's Eve. I can honestly say that I have no idea what happened to the last three years. It feels like I was holding this sweet little baby in my arms yesterday and now all of a sudden I have a preschooler. The sweetest, smartest preschooler that I know. She amazes me each and every day. She came home the first week of school and signed the letter 'B' and said she wanted to take Barney as her letter B item for show and tell. All throughout the Holiday Season she's had us in good spirits with her constant caroling, and best of all she smothers me regularly with her awesome hugs!

We're in Pennsylvania visiting family for the New Year so we celebrated her birthday with cupcakes and ice cream and we'll do it all over again once we're back in Michigan. She's cute, so we let her slide like that.. having two birthdays.

Speaking of Pennsylvania, we're having a great time. We don't get to visit nearly as often as I'd like but when we're here the girls have a blast. Sure they eat too much sugar, stay up to late, don't get enough sleep and they're cranky... But they get to see their grandma and pappy, their grandma sassy and all of their cousins, aunts, uncles, etc... That's the one thing about living so far away that gets me, they don't get to see their family - I don't get to see my family.

Pretty soon though it'll be back to Michigan, back to work, back to school, back to the realities of life. 2010 brought sickness, heartache, family drama, a financial crisis, difficult jobs, too much stress, too much mess and I'm glad that we're putting that all behind us.

2011 is a fresh start and I'm looking forward to it. After all a few good things did come out of 2010 that will pave our path in 2011 like the Church and Church family that we've become a part of. It has been our saving grace, literally. We were both saved and baptized at CrossPointe in 2010, and we're definitely looking forward to the exciting things to come at CrossPointe in 2011. We also found an amazing school that the girls are going to. N is in the Preschool 3's and K is in the Pre-K class and they love it! We couldn't have found a better school!

So goodbye 2010, Hello 2011 - I'm looking forward to the adventure that lies ahead!

Happy New Year everyone!

Busy, Busy - when I get the time!

I'm working on Christmas Presents at the moment - it's sneaking up on us pretty fast!

Shhh.. Don't tell Hugga!

I think she'll like it, at least I hope she does! I made it using the tutorial from Chocolate on my Cranium. It was really, really easy. I see more of these in my future, I can think of a few kids that would love to have these. Plus Hugga needs one for her markers too ;)

I didn't forget about Taters - I made her a snuggly blanket. I used JoAnns snuggle fleece that was on sale a few weeks back and bound it with some satin blanket binding that my good friend Trudi passed along to me. It's silky & soft - what baby doesn't love that? If I make a blanket like this again there are a few things I'd do differently - I'd definitely zig zag from the start. I started out straight stitching all the way around until I hit a corner and while I thought I was catching both sides, in some places I wasn't so I went back afterwards and zig zagged it and it's great now.

Straight-stitching was a waste of time for me.

This is a surprise ;) Don't want the receiver to accidentally figure out what they're getting!

I also made some babylegs from some socks I found on clearance at Target! I tried a small cuff and a large cuff - one for Hugga & one for Taters, they both work really well!

2 Weeks 20 Diapers

It's all a blur... but it feels really good to have them done :)

Actually it's more like 20 Medium Pocket Diapers and 20 Inserts

I also cut out 6 dipes for Taters and got one of those done - Where's the paper bag smiley when you need it? I'd like to finish those this week. Then I plan to start some Christmas sewing!

Oops! I forgot to mention that Taters mastered these yesterday. I went upstairs to get some sewing done and 2 minutes later I hear happy squeals coming from the top of the stairs! Nick caught her sneaking up them at the bottom step and followed close behind her but she decided that 9.5 months was plenty old enough to be able to climb up stairs to see what mommy was doing.

I guess this means we need to start putting gates up all over the place again!

You know... They really shouldn't grow up so fast!

Want a good upper-body workout?

Just get a snap press!!

Never buy another peice of exercise equipment again!

Just go snap-happy once a day and ache your muscles into submission!

I never knew how difficult snapping with an industrial snap press could be until I got one, and tried it for myself. I got it just before I had Taters and I think I probably gave myself a hernia the first time I tried to apply snaps to a diaper. It takes some serious force (or perhaps I really should work out more.) I can only apply snaps to diapers in small increments. I think 6 diapers is my limit. I just applied snaps to 6 diapers and I fear that if I try to continue tonight, my arm just might fall off.

Hugga is coloring with markers at my feet at the moment. She didn't take a nap today at Mamaws house and so she slept from the time I picked her up, straight through dinner, until about 9pm when I was trying to get Taters to sleep. Then, of course, Hugga wakes up - energized and hungry. Now that she's had something to eat she's not ready to go to bed. So coloring it is. She dumps the entire bucket of markers all over the floor, picks the marker that she wants to use (usually blue these days) and colors all over the page. Then she puts the markers back in the bucket, dumps them out again, and puts them back in the bucket again. She has an obsession with organizing things and I know where she gets it from. I hate cleaning, but I love to ogranize things - go figure.

Here's my current sewing To Do List:

20 Diapers & 20 Inserts for Jesse

10 more Diapers for Taters

10 Panties for Hugga

Skull Sling for Leslie

OS Diapers for Bethann

Holiday/Birthday Sewing

Fabric Dollhouse for Hugga

Fleece Pants for Hugga & Taters

Dresses for Hugga & Taters

I-Spy Bag for Hugga

Blankey for Taters

Fleece Sleeping Bag & Pillow for Hugga

Crayon Roll for Hugga

Dolls for Hugga & Taters

Puppets for the Girls

Fleece Scarves for 25 Adults

Cloth Bags for 13 Adult Couples

Disclaimer - My list isn't even done yet and I know I won't get it all done! I'm over-ambitious, but at least that means my heart is in the right place - right?

My kids amaze me every day!

Hugga played with a little "laptop" for the majority of the day yesterday. It has letters AEIOU on it, a picture of a corresponding item starting with the letter next to it, then it has colors, shapes, and numbers on it. There's a little game you play and it asks you to "Find it" by matching what is shown on the screen. My 2.5 year old has mastered this little laptop. She matches them all and rarely has a mistake. I'm so proud of her!

She's also recognizing most of her colors. We went through a phase where she called everything Orange. If you pushed her to tell you the real color eventually she would but she'd always start off by saying "orange." Last night we were picking out pajamas and I asked her if she wanted to wear her piggie jammies or her princess jammies. She told me mommy.. no, purple princess jammies (wasn't even one of the options.) She caught me off guard though. I said oh, which ones are purple? Sure enough she reached to the bottom of the pile and pulled out the purple Ariel pajamas. So I ask her what color her shirt is and she replies "pink", what color is mommy's shirt "orange", what color is the couch "green" - we haven't really been going through this with her because everything has been orange but I guess it all clicked in her little head one day :)

My last gush for the day about Hugga is that she loves her Mommy & Me DVD. It had been packed away for a while because we never opened up the boxes of DVDs after we moved (because we still haven't come to an agreement about what to do with them - we have an obscene # of DVDs.) Well we started going through them in the process of purging excess "things" in our house and I found a whole stack of Hugga's DVDs. She loves this one in particular because it's like a video of a mommy & me group singing and dancing to nursery rhymes. She knows all the moves and she dances around the living room happy as can be :)

Taters loves that video too. She actually stood up completely on her own with her hands in the air (because they were singing about up & down.) She went from crawling to walking around the coffee table, couch, and loveseat - all in the same week. Now she's making every attempt she possibly can to step out on her own. I am NOT ready for her to start walking! She's pretty much the best a baby can be - perfectly well behaved, rarely cries, etc... but she gets into EVERYTHING, she's very curious to say the least! I'm afraid of what her curiosity will get her into once she's even more mobile!

She's starting to say "mama" more often. Her first word was "dada" which is fair, I guess, because Hugga said "mama" first (though it's a little frustrating when I do everything for her and yet she calls me "dada" much to my chagrin.) No matter how many times I say "mama" back at her up until this point she's just smiled at me and babbled on about "dadadada" sigh. But now I think she finally got it - I'm mama, not dada!

It's funny how it's so exciting to hear these first words and you feel as though you can't wait for them to learn how to talk but then reality sets in. They learn how to talk and then you wish that just for one minute out of the entire day they would "hush" and quit saying your name and get out of your rear end long enough for you to get something done or have a thought to yourself. Hugga has a problem with saying something over and over again while she thinks of what she's saying next or saying your name until you acknoweldge her. It wears my nerves thin to hear "mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy" over and over again and then hear "I, I, I, I, I, I go to bed with daddy!" - as if she has a stuttering problem. She doesn't really though, I think her little brain just works to fast for her to spit all the words out.

What happened to my babies, they're growing up way too fast! Furthermore, Who told them it was allowed!?

Hugga (03-04-06)

Taters (12-31-07)

Mental note for the future - cutting out 18 diapers and two pairs of fleece pants all in a row - hurts your back!

That being said I love making diapers in an assembly line. It just feels more rewarding to get a whole pile of diapers done all at once.

Want a sneak preview?

18 Size Medium "Huggataters"

12 for a Custom Order for a special someone ;)

6 for Taters

I also made a pair of Steelers Fleece pants for Taters and a pair for my cousin's baby due to arrive here any day now :) I hope my cousin likes them - who am I kidding though. I know she'll like them. We bleed black & gold! I should have picked up more of this fleece so I could make a pair for Hugga but I just didn't have enough - I made her Halloween dress last week though so in all fairness it was Taters turn!

I'm starting my Christmas list as well. I have a few projects that I would like to get done that I think my girls will really like.

I also have an idea to make a bag with some small gifts inside for Nick's family. They decided that we're not going to exchange gifts this year because of finances but we're still getting together as usual for dinner and we're still going to draw names and exchange gifts for the kids. Well, this year it's at my house and I think I want to surprise everyone with a little something. It might not be much because he has 6 aunts & uncles and they have kids & their kids have kids.. but I figured it would be a nice surprise if I could come up with something. Christmas isn't about giving extravagant gifts, or spending a ton of money. It's not even about gifts at all, but it's nice to know that someone thought of you and what's more thoughtful than a homemade/handmade gift specifically for you.

What do you do with a daughter who loves to help you cook?

You get silly - that's what!

This is from last week but I didn't want to neglect posting it. Hugga & I made silly-cakes for breakfast last weekend. A little food coloring can go a long way ;)

Side note - how do you make it so they don't get air-bubbles like that?

We had a fabulous day today!

It's been unusually chilly around here lately and so all week I was looking forward to this weekend because it was supposed to be warm(er) and sunny!

Well as it turns out it was perfect weather for what we had planned! I decided this morning that I wanted to make Hugga a special outfit for the day & this is what I came up with. I'm pretty happy with it too! I didn't use a pattern, just winged it. It's the first time I've done a top with sleeves because up until this point it's been warm and I've cheated and done simple sleeveless dresses. It's also my first time doing a traditional neckline, my first time doing a stretchy gathered waistline, and my first time making tights! There were a lot of firsts with this but it really wasn't that difficult. I had the idea in my head and I managed to create it - that is simply amazing if you ask me :)

She wore it all day & I didn't have time to take pictures before it went on so I didn't get any pictures of the outfit itself. Unfortunately there was an accident too.. her leg got caught on FILs walker and it ripped two holes in the tights :( but I can't complain.. this was fabric that I scored big-time on. I found it on the Wal-Mart $1 rack and I was able to get this outfit and a pair of Gaucho's for me out of 2 yards of it! The Halloween fabric was freecycled to me - so essentially this outfit cost me $1.



One of the local townships sponsored a "Not so scary pirate forest." They actually had a lot of fun little events, certainly worth the $2 cover charge in my opinion.

• Tractor-pulled hayride
• Wax hands
• Temp. Tattoos
• Storytelling
• Karate presentation
• Magician/Juggling/Fire Juggling
• Inflatables
• Miniature Golf
  
• Fire Safety demonstrations
• Nature walk with silly pirate pin-ups & cheesy (not scary) decorations
• Cider & Donuts
• Pirate masks & treat bags for all the kids
  

It is definitely something that I would take the girls back to next year if they have it again. Kiersten had fun! I'm glad she went along with another little girl (slightly older) into the inflatables though because she got stuck climbing up the ladder inside because it wasn't sturdy enough for her and she couldn't get her grip I guess. Random little girl (I think her name was Rachel) saved us from having to climb in and help her out!

Where was Taters during all of this you ask?


She was perfectly content on my back just taking in the fresh air and watching everybody :) As usual I got a hundred different people who came up to me asking me where I got the Mei-Tai. I say - I made it and I think a few of them expected me to whip out a business card or something. I even had a lady tell me I was crazy for not selling handmade items because she loved Kiersten's outfit and loved the Mei-Tai. I'm working on it people!!! I just don't have the time!!!

Our next adventure was the Applefest in New Boston. I didn't expect it to be as big as it was, but it was two streets of the town completely packed with people. I was really surprised at the amound of handmade goods, especially soaps and children's clothing! I found myself silently criticizing some of the work and drooling over others. We bought something, but i'm not going to share that because who knows if the person who'll be receiving it will read this or not ;) It wasn't clothing or soap though - even though the yummy smelling soaps were soooo tempting!


After that we went to Apple Charlies! I wanted to do U-PICK apples but we didn't get around to it :(. Hugga got to feed the animals though. Last year she wasn't so sure about letting them near her hand but this year she was fearless! I was shocked to see her going right up to the fences - not scared at all!

I have to wonder how much food these animals can really eat though. There were a ton of people at Apple Charlies today and everyong was throwing food at these little guys... I can't imagine that's healthy for them!

Last but not least we treated ourself to some cider and donuts. We sat down at the pavillion with some random singer on stage and listened to the music and had our treat and relaxed for what seemed like the first time all day. Afterwards we went to the corner restaurant by our house for some warm soup and some dinner. We were so busy all day I don't think we thought about food much at all and even though we had breakfast and lunch, dinner was late because we were at the orchard. We were all hungry though and no one fought bed-time tonight. They both crashed before I even had a chance to get them into their jammies!

If that's not a good day, I don't know what is!

Tomorrow I think we're going to put up some Halloween Decorations!

Why am I blogging?


Ummmm.. everyone else is doing it!? Is that really a good enough answer? I've had a LiveJournal for years and at this point it's mostly just to keep in touch with the people that I've known for so long on there.

I guess I just see my girls growing up way too fast and find that there's another year almost over and realize that I should write down some things so I don't forget them later on.

I also want somewhere to put everything I sew to see my progress so I'll be posting that here as well.

So (sew) stay tuned because there's more to come!